“The talent ceremony must have punched partway through Werigo’s spell.” He paused, his voice going rough. “My subconscious knew I was cursed, and that I had to drive you away, but my conscious self didn’t know why. All I knew was that I was making you miserable and I didn’t know how to stop.
And when I tried to fix things, it felt like my head was ripping itself apart.”
“And now?” Her mouth had gone suddenly dry.
“The second I figured it out, the headache quit. I know what’s going on now, so my protective instincts don’t need to clash with my wanting to be with you.”
“Gods,” she whispered.
“Everything’s going to be different from now on. I promise.” He held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go brief the others. You’re right—we need to work together to come up with a plan.”
But as she took his hand and let him tug her into his arms, let herself rest her cheek on his shoulder for a moment, part of her held itself away. She had spent a long time telling herself that everything would be okay if they could figure out what had gone wrong, and how to fix it. Instead, things were more complicated than ever. And she wasn’t sure she trusted any of it.
Tired and sad, Patience mostly sat back and listened while Brandt brought the others up to speed. That was, until Lucius asked Brandt to draw the mark he’d cut out of his leg, and he sketched out a glyph that was reminiscent of a sailboat on the ocean, with seagulls flocking around the mast, all contained within a round-cornered square.
The air went thin in her lungs and the low-grade nausea in the pit of her stomach kicked up several notches. She leaned in, touched the picture. “Akbal.”
“What?”
“It’s the name of the glyph,” Lucius said. “Akbal. It symbolizes the third day of the everyday calendar of the ancients. Literally translated, it means ‘darkness, ’ because it was associated with . . .”
He trailed off, then finished, “Eclipses. Okay. That’s relevant.” He looked at Patience. “It means something to you?”
“Akbal is the Abyss card.” She paused. “I told you guys how I almost always pull the Mother card, Imix, when I’m putting myself in the light position of a spread. Well, when the card representing me is in the shadow position, I almost always pull Akbal. Its negative aspects are issues of internalization, poor self-image, depression, and fear of change.” She had to remind herself to breathe, as if her body had suddenly forgotten how. “I guess I was destined to be the third sacrifice all along, huh? And I guess we know when it’s supposed to happen.”
She kept her voice steady, but her thoughts spun with an inner litany. Oh, gods. Why me? Why now?
Why like this? She had thought she was through with the tears, all cried out for the day. She was wrong.
The glyph symbolizing Brandt’s last sacrifice was the one that represented her shadow self.
“Fuck that.” He surged to his feet. Once he was up, though, he didn’t go anywhere. He just glared down at her, eyes hard and wild. “I drew the glyph wrong. It’s something else.”
She shook her head. Swiping at her cheeks and trying to breathe past the churning fear to find her warrior’s strength, she said, “Akbal fits too well. It’s connected to dark caves, obsidian, water, and access to dream worlds and memories, all of which symbolize your visions and what we’ve been through over the past few days. What’s more, pulling the card is a call to step into the unknown . . . or the afterlife.”
“I won’t do it,” he said flatly.
“I don’t want you to. But we can’t let Cabrakan get loose.” She stood and faced him, refusing to let her legs shake. “You saw those pictures. You heard the numbers. Ten thousand people died in the Mexico City earthquake, and that was a year after the massacre sealed the barrier. How much worse will it be with the barrier wide-open? What’s more, the miniquakes haven’t just been confined to Mexico.” She paused, fear tightening her throat. “He could hit anywhere in the world. Anywhere. ”
Anywhere . . . as in where the twins and winikin were hidden. And she wouldn’t even know they were gone.
A muscle pulsed at the side of his jaw. “We’ll go somewhere safe, dig in, and hide. That’s what we should’ve done in the first place.” He cut a steely look at Strike. “Sometimes a man has to put the woman he loves above the writs.”
The king didn’t say anything. But he didn’t order Brandt to retake the oath either.
Heart aching, Patience took his hand, not caring that they were laying things out in public this time, where before they had always tried to keep a layer of privacy intact. “Once upon a time, I would’ve given anything to hear you say that.”
His gold-flecked eyes radiated raw pain. “But not anymore?”
“It still matters. But running away isn’t an option, and you know it. Cabrakan is going to come after the Nightkeepers. Even if we hide, he’ll find us.” She turned their joined hands so their marks faced the sky. “He’ll be able to track us the same way the boluntiku tracked our families.”
He looked away. “I fucking hate this.”
“Finally, something we agree on.”
“Shit.” He let out a long, drawn-out sigh and let his forehead rest on hers. “This sucks.”
They stood there for a moment, leaning into each other while their teammates watched in silence.
Finally, Strike said, “Okay, you two. Go get something to eat, and take a few hours of downtime. If you’re not ready to crash yet, you will be soon.”
She was dully surprised to realize that it had grown dark out.
“Want me to pull something together for you?” Sasha offered. In her previous life out in the human world, she had been a highly trained chef.
Patience grinned humorlessly. “Normally I’d be all over that offer. But it feels a little too last-
mealish right now. Maybe tomorrow, okay? Or, even better, next week. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Come on.” Brandt pulled Patience away from the group. But instead of heading straight for their suite, he detoured them to the main kitchen. At her sidelong look, he said, “Don’t know about you, but I’m starving. And I’d like some privacy.”
But where for so long when he’d said “privacy,” he’d really meant “time alone,” now he meant
“time alone with you.”
Swallowing against the sudden press of emotion, she nodded. Together, they raided Jox’s supplies for enough food to fix a simple meal of the sort they had cooked together back in Pittsburgh, in the pretty starter house with the chrome toaster and Formica countertops. She was aware that the meeting continued on in their absence, with Strike and Leah discussing contingencies for the solstice-eclipse, while Lucius and Jade conferred with Rabbit about something that lit the younger man’s expression with a wary hope that was mirrored in Myrinne’s face.
But although she was aware of those things, she was also very aware of Brandt, and the way he moved around the kitchen and nearby storeroom and walk-in cooler, juggling the veggies and packaged chicken breasts she’d handed him while cruising the small wine selection and picking a chardonnay.
A small bubble of privacy seemed to separate them from the others, just like it used to out in the outside world, when—especially before they had Harry and Braden—they had often shopped like this, not even really talking about what they were going to make, partly because they were letting it evolve from their choices, and partly because they had been so in tune that they hadn’t needed the words.
They might not have recognized it as magic back then, but it had certainly been magical.
Now that same sense of simpatico bound them together as they finished “shopping” and headed for their suite.